Before passing to this, however, I desire to direct your attention to your observation that “the right of each citizen to hold as his own began with the laborer who claimed the product of his labor.” The convincing power of this statement is lacking, because you have failed to prove to us that without private ownership of land man can not “claim the products of his labor.” As a matter of fact, you can not furnish such proof because it is manifestly untrue. Before the savage, wandering in the primeval forest, ever dreamed of laying claim to any parcel of the soil as his own, did he not so lay claim to the fish and game he took? Did he not so lay claim to the fruits and berries he gathered? Did not the tribesman who followed his flocks and herds over the plains so lay claim to them as the product of his labor? Without ever a thought of the private ownership of the soil, he had produced them as truly as the stockman of today produces the cattle he sends to market, and he valiantly disputed the right of any person to any share of them. Most truly he who labors is entitled to labor’s product, but to say that in order to claim such product it is necessary to privately own land is to fly into the face of obvious fact. How many of the wage earners of today are land owners? How much is added to the wages of those few who are, by reason of this fact? You yourself raised the point that it is not necessary to own land in order to fleece the public, laborer, land-owner and all out of their earnings. If this be true how do you harmonize it with your former claim that it was private ownership of land that first made it possible for the laborer to claim and retain the product of his labor. I come now to the case of the “score of tribesmen” of whom you speak. While the score were fishing, hunting, drinking or gambling, the one cleared the wild land, fenced out the rest and claimed it as _his land_. But, in fact, did this make it his land? By virtue of what did it become his land? You doubtless had this question in mind when you attempted to answer it in the following: “Having put his labor into the land, having changed it from a waste into a farm, it was the most natural thing in the world that he should claim it as his own. Why shouldn’t he? _He_ made it a farm.” What was his ultimate purpose in putting his labor into the farm? Was it not the products which his labor, applied to the land, would bring forth? You say “he made it a farm.” He found it a farm awaiting his efforts. You will agree that he was entitled only to the result of his own labor. In fact, this is the truth for which you are contending. What were the results of his labor, the farm or the products? Manifestly the latter. These he enjoyed. Upon what possible ground, then, could he go still further and claim also the soil as belonging to himself and his heirs forever?